Legendary rocker Chris Cornell used a red exercise band and a special clip to kill himself inside a Detroit hotel room, according to a new report.
Cornell, 52, who took his life Wednesday after playing a show with Soundgarden, attached the exercise band to a carabiner — a shackle typically used for rock climbing — to the top of the bathroom door in his room at the MGM Grand Detroit, TMZ reported Friday.
The grunge icon jammed the door shut with the carabiner and hanged himself, the celebrity gossip website reported.
Earlier on Friday, Cornell’s family — in a statement through a lawyer — said they’re “disturbed” at “inferences that Chris knowingly and intentionally” killed himself, suggesting that side effects from a prescribed anti-anxiety drug, Ativan, may have played a role.
Cornell’s wife of 13 years, Vicky Karayiannis, said in the statement that her husband, a recovering addict, was slurring his words when she spoke to him by phone after his performance at Fox Theatre in the Motor City, and told her “he may have took an extra Ativan or two.”
The family is awaiting the results of toxicology tests.
During the couple’s phone conversation, Cornell repeatedly told Karayiannis, “I am just tired,” the Detroit News reported, citing a police report that the news outlet obtained.
A panicked Karayiannis said she then contacted bodyguard Martin Kirsten to check on Cornell around midnight, the local newspaper reported.
The bodyguard found Cornell in the bathroom “with blood running from his mouth and a red exercise band around [his] neck,” the police report said, according to the Detroit News.
According to the report, Kirsten was in Cornell’s room around 11:30 p.m. Wednesday to help Cornell fix his computer, and Kirsten gave Cornell two Ativan pills, “which the victim takes for anxiety.”